"A lot of us just can't go back and live the way we've been living," said Denise Loafman, 27. "Or we just don't have the energy to go back."
Like many who fled to shelters, Fleury saw only moderate damage to her house. She and her daughter and two granddaughters stayed there for three days after Charley hit, but the fourth day proved too much.
Rose Vito leaves the temporary unemployment station at Port Charlotte, Fla., for victims of Hurricane Charley.
(Gregory Bull -- AP)
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Hurricane Charley Hits Florida: Hurricane Charley hit Florida on Friday with more force than predicted, leaving thousands homeless.
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Hurricanes Compared: See how Charley compares with major storms over the past 10 years.
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There was raw sewage in a ditch nearby, and the girls, ages 6 and 9, developed rashes. As she waited in line for water and ice on Tuesday afternoon, Fleury said, one of the girls vomited in the back seat of the car and Fleury was delirious from heat and exhaustion. "I was crying behind the wheel," she said. "I wasn't sure where to go or what to do."
Ice lines remained long, though the arrival of the National Guard dramatically sped them up. In downtown Punta Gorda on Tuesday morning, about 80 Guardsmen filled six cars every two minutes with bags of ice, three cases of bottled water and tarps. The crew of 350 served 2,000 to 3,000 vehicles on Monday, Capt. Conrad Case said.
Officials from Fort Myers Beach and Sanibel Island, two barrier islands just off Fort Myers, said they would allow residents to return home on Wednesday morning.
All airports in affected areas resumed normal service except for the Punta Gorda airport, which operated only during the day, state spokeswoman Kathalyn Gaither said. More than 90 mobile cafeterias fanned out in neighborhoods, and emergency workers distributed 1.9 million gallons of water, she said.
Surveying the damage from the open window of a Coast Guard Jayhawk helicopter, Ridge and Thompson saw the upturned airplanes, decapitated trees, roofless homes and flattened trailers that Bush had seen two days earlier. From 800 feet above, the most encouraging sign was the dozens of bright blue tarps stretched over many houses, a sign that some families are at least protected from the daily thunderstorms.
"You never get over the devastation associated with the force of Mother Nature," Ridge said. "It's just the indiscriminate nature of it."
Administration officials have brushed off suggestions that the attention being paid Florida is related to the state's 27 electoral votes in the November presidential election. Virtually every county brutalized by Hurricane Charley -- including Lee, Charlotte, DeSoto, Hardee and Collier -- voted for the Bush-Cheney ticket in the 2000 recounted vote.
Ridge, Thompson and Brown rode by motorcade through parts of Fort Myers that escaped Charley with minimal damage. When Ridge spotted a man loading the remains of a row of mango trees into a pickup truck, he leaped out to shake the man's hand.
"We depend on a lot of people like you to help us recover," Ridge told Terry Sumners.
